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Thursday, March 31, 2011

As regular readers know, I hate Counterpunch. Read my post about its editor, Alexander Cockburn, or the indictment made by Bill Weinberg of the radical anti-capitalist World War 4 Report, to find out why. I have the Wikipedia page on Counterpunch on my watchlist, but I don't edit there as much as I used to, and checked in today to find that the criticism section has been removed, and that a more moderate "reception" section, with positive and negative evaluations, is also missing. These sections are likely to be fought over fiercely, and come and go, so for the record I am posting extracts from the material linked to here, below the fold. I have also added some material from the liberal anti-fascist blogger Adam Holland. As a blog, Holland's site would not be a "reliable source" for Wikipedia to cite, but his posts are extremely well researched and thoroughly referenced. I have also added an extract from an article at reason.com by Michael Moynihan, which concisely summarises the case against Counterpunch's Israel Shamir.

This material is relevant to our recent debate about the racist Gilad Atzmon, who Counterpunch publish and support, to Bill Weinberg's recent expulsion from Pacifica station WBAI, and to the whole sorry WikiLeaks saga. More broadly and more importantly, it is relevant to the spread of irrational, magical, paranoid, conspirationist thought on the left, which is always reactionary. Antisemitism, as in the the case of the blood libel Counterpunch has promoted, is often a good indicator of this sort of right-wing thought and its growing influence on the left.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Update: Is Lewisham Islamic Centre a centre of hate?
Brockley Central linked to my post on the Lewisham mosque. An update came in from Lewisham council on the centre becoming a hate crime reporting site: "The Islamic Centre is not a third party reporting site. They gave initial commitment last March to the scheme, and were included in the original leaflets but have since been pulled from the list. They did not agree to sign up to the reporting protocol."

Working Class Tory
Talking of him, I'm going to add him to the blogroll, for posts like these: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

The degeneration of the Egyptian revolution
In Egypt, the Mubarak regime has gone, but the new military junta has closed down much of the democratic spirit which burst forth in the revolution. Islamism is on the rise, as exemplified by the harassment of the secularist ElBaradei when he went to vote against the inadequate constitutional proposal in last week's referendum. The yes vote was endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood and Mubarak's National Democratic Party. The yes vote was of course endorsed by the US State Department, hopeful it will mean a swift return to business as normal - the business of doing business that is. The gloomier scenario is electoral advance for the well-organised Muslim Brotherhood, and some kind of Pakistani style outcome seems to me the increasingly likely outcome in Egypt: military/Islamist co-operation with the light veneer of democracy and funding from the USA to bolster it. The military junta is also trying to outlaw trade union dissent, while the army has used virginity tests against women protestors. More from Amr Ezzat.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

I've nearly ploughed my way through yesterday's Guardian. Five observations:

1. The front page story on American forces shooting at pro-rebel villagers when rescuing downed airmen: I felt that the paper gave this undue weight, compared to all the other stories (although the web edition doesn't give it a very prominent place). I am not a soldier, and cannot pass judgement on the decisions made under conditions I can only imagine - but this seems like a grave blunder. More than that, it seems to me that there have been far too many times (in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and now in Libya) when US forces turn their guns on civilians on the side they are meant to be protecting, and this must tell us something worrying about American military culture. And this is why it is hard for me to be unqualified in my support of the intervention. I'd like to think I'm wrong.

2. Simon Tisdalls's "world briefings": Is it just me, or are these flimsy pieces more or less devoid of facts? As far as I can tell, the Guardian simply employs him to give a veneer of facticity to empty liberal platitudes.

Nothing to do with the Guardian, I composed a post in my head about Nicolas Sarkozy, entitled "Islamophobia at home, Arabophilia abroad", but I'm unlikely to type it, so I thought I'd just share the title.

Homophobia vs Islamophbia in East London?
Reports by Whitechapel Anarchist Group, Time Out, Alan A, Peter Tatchell, Sarah AB, Johan Hari, Le Flaneur, and lots more from Safra Project. I think there's more to be said about this, such as the issue of gentrification in the East End, and queers (after squatters and along with artists) as the frontline of that, and the politics of resentment that stirs up in one of the poorest parts of Britain. Another is homophobia as a kind of index of assimilation of Sylheti origin male youth into London's masculine urban culture, with its blend of the best and worst of white working class and black expressive cultures. Another is the urgent need for a more sophisticated politics of alliance beyond the simplicities of queer or Muslim identity politics or the old shibboleths of anti-fascism. This is required reading for people thinking about this stuff.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

This post is about Lewisham Islamic Centre, also known as Lewisham and Kent Mosque, on the main road between Lewisham Hospital and Catford. All the information is second hand; if anyone has any additions or corrections, please leave a comment.

Habibi at HP has a post claiming the Centre is a centre of extremist hate preaching, noting former imam Shakeel Begg, whose various unsavoury positions were the subject of an old post of mine (here).

The post focuses on an event at the centre, at which a pro-stoning and antisemitic speaker from Saudi Arabia, Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid, was to be live in satellite link. The promotional material for the event includes an attack on Usama Hasan, a Muslim cleric who has spoken out against extremist forms of Wahhabi Islam. Saleem Begg, who has also been an imam at Lewisham, has incited violence, even murder, against Usama Hasan.

Yesterday evening, I went to see the great Fred Halliday talking at Goldsmiths College in New Cross, South London. What a treat to hear an academic talking in accessible, vivid language! I have to say the paper was not that well-ordered, but more an enjoyable romp through a number of important issues, so I’ll present here a few of the things he said. Square brackets indicate that I’m extrapolating a bit; otherwise it’s more or less paraphrased, with accurate direct quotes in quotation marks.

1. On the growing “spirit of resistance to Islamism” in Sudan.

There is a story of the Islamist governor of Khartoum stopping at one of the roadside stalls where older women sell the traditional local alcoholic beverage, as “tea”. “But this is un-Islamic!” he says. She ignores him and he asks her if she knows who he is. “I’m the governor of Khartoum!” “One more of these, dear,” she says, “and you’ll tell me you’re the president!”

2. On the Clash of Civilizations thesis.

Samuel Huntington is a clever chap and has written good books, but this isn’t one of them. The book is immensely popular not just in Washington but amongst Sunni militants like Bin Laden, Hindu nationalists, and Chinese post-Communists. His analysis is also directly mirrored by the [left-wing “Power of Nightmares”] position that, once the Cold War ended, America/the West needed a new enemy and found one in Islam.

These simplistic views are easily unsettled by a little scholarly probing. First, if European powers have had an “Other” against which they are defined, it is their European neighbours: Britain has defined itself against French and German “Others”, France against Britain and Germany, and Germany against Britain, France and Russia. These places have been more concerned with their empires than with Islam. Islamic Turkey has moved in and out of alliances with European countries over the centuries, much as America has since the Cold War moved in and out of alliances with Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan.

More importantly, why do we imagine countries need “Others” to be defined against? It is not culture or collective psychology but realpolitik – profit and statecraft – that have been the prime determinants of how states act in relation to other states. As Voltaire said on visiting the stock exchange in London in the 1720s, in the marketplace, Muslims, Christians and Jews get on and the only infidel is the bankrupt man.

Evidence against the clash of civilizations thesis and for the fact that “interests of state” trump religious solidarity would be Iran’s foreign policy: supporting Hindu India against Muslim Pakistan on Kashmir, supporting Russia against Chechnya, Peking against the Muslims of Xinjiang, and Christian Armenia against Shi’ite Azerbaijan.

The left has to begin from the premise of support for the Lybian people’s resistance to the Gaddafi tyranny. This is only a ‘civil war’ in the sense that all revolutions are civil strife. Given the opportunity the Lybian masses rallied to calls to overthrow the Gaddafi-state. Only its immediate use of violent repression halted their advance.

The Lybian uprising takes place within the context of pan-regional Arab democratic revolutions. It is directed against a bureaucratic capitalist tyranny, with close links to international capital, Western states and institutions.

The UN-endorsed military interventions are neither part of a plan for military occupation, nor for the installation of an externally created political replacement for Gaddafi. In the first instance they correspond to the express wishes of the Lybian popular masses, as organised in their provisional governing bodies.

The UN sanctioned actions are not part of any generalised right to ‘humanitarian intervention’ but correspond to the particular needs of the Lybian population, under imminent threat of repression by the Gaddafi state machine. The are aimed to protect civilian populations.

Those who seek retrospective justification for backing the invasion of Iraq – to overthrow Saddam Hussain - misjudge the present resolution. It has been made within the context of a genuine popular revolution, internally rooted. It is not a recipe for external regime change, nor for a world-wide policing operation to enforce liberal democracy. Iraq remains proof of the way in which geopolitics are not dominated by ethical universalism but by military, commercial and resource interests. The political and civil society structures it has left behind remain an open wound.

Those who oppose such help to the Lybian revolution have some justification. The UK, France, and the US are undoubtably as concerned to be in the ‘wave of history’, that is, on the side of the Arab movements for change, and their own strategic interests as they are bothered by humanitarian concerns. Equally their capacity to help effectively and impartially, without unnecessary violence, the Lybian people, remains untested.

However blanket opposition to such measures is morally bankrupt. The Stop the War Coalition’s call to demonstrate today against the help offered to the Lybian people in their desperate hour of need isrepellent.

We should not put all anti-interventionists in the same camp as the charlatan George Galloway and others who will no doubt brandish the threadbare accusation that this resolution is a mask for naked imperialism. The claim by Counterfire that the UN move is inspired by fear of a revolution already fighting-back are empty.

But arguments, such as those employed by Tony Benn, that this is a ‘civil war’ – giving each ‘side’ a weight, are we have seen, false. Further claims about the West’s hypocrisy are distinctly distasteful. That, for example, the West does not intervene in Bahrain. This comparison is used by those who would immediately oppose Western miliary action in such countries.

The decisive point is that UN excludes a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory. Intervention can naturally excalate, and we should be wary of this – as the Weekly Worker has pointed out. But, as Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Parti de Gauche says, there is no mandate for physically landing French or any other foreign troops in the country (Here).

In the absence of any other means of international support, and in view of the dramatic threat posed to Lybian lives by Gaddafi’s’ forces, we would therefore give qualified support for UN resolution 1973.

Much of the aforementioned commentary from the laptop anti-imperialists seems to have been based on the assumptions that Western intervention in the affairs of Libya would either be the incarnation of oil-interests or the relatively more charitable interpretation that it would be merely a very stupid knee-jerk response to the impulse that 'something must be done'.

The possibility that it isinactionthat might be motivated by oil-interests or 'geo-political' concerns doesn't seem to have occurred to them.

I still haven't finished writing that post. Flesh's new post very eloquently says lots of the things I feel confusedly. Meanwhile, I've continued my seeking out of sane voices and informed news sources. These include: Dimi Reider, Meretz USA, Diaa Hadid, Hussein Ibish. I have also added a box down on the bottom right aggregating rss feeds of some alternative news sources from Israel/Palestine. Despite the horror and evil of the Itamar massacre, and the stupidness of responding by expanding the settlements, I have read a number of articles giving cause for cautious optimism, such as by East Timor's Jose Ramos Horta on a visit to Israel/Palestine, by Josef Olmert on the West Bank, and by Diaa Hadid on the would-be Facebook revolutions in Palestine.

This week's album desires: Jamie XX's remix of Gil Scott Heron - listen to "New York is killing me" at Metrojolt, plus lots on YouTube, including "I'm New Here" below. Neil Diamond The Bang Years. What an amazing two years of output, including "Solitary Man", "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" and "I'm A Believer". Read reviews at Pop Matters and End Hits.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

To be honest, I have no idea what I think should be done. I find the liberal resistance to any action of any sort that dominates The Guardian rather distasteful, but don't know what sort of action I would advocate in response. Simon Jenkins on Wednesday was one example of irritatingness:

Libya strategists are said to be torturing themselves over timing. Barack Obama says he "needs" Gaddafi to go, and David Cameron's position is much the same. Why this need is so pressing when, just months ago, Gaddafi was a dear ally and patron of western scholarship is a mystery. But in Cameron's statement on no-fly zones last week, Britain appeared to assert its right in international law to remove Gaddafi, as it did the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

Our rulers were obviously wrong, cynical and corrupt to think or claim to think that Gaddafi was a good thing a few months ago. But it should also be obvious what has changed and why the issue is now pressing: his slaughter of at least hundreds and probably thousands of "his" citizens.

In this ambition he was supported by the leftwing international lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, who claimed to have found a right for "states to render assistance to innocent civilians battling for their lives" wherever that might be. This right apparently "emerges or crystallises" not from any democratic decision but from "state practice, conventions, writings of jurists and dictates of collective conscience"... It is the Bush-Cheney theory of zero national sovereignty, and could be used to justify every aggressive war by Washington or Moscow over the last 50 years.

I have written before that national sovereignty is one of the most reactionary ideas there is. "What is a nation? How can a nation have a “self”? How is that “self” supposed to determine itself? Why should that self-determination take the shape of a state? Why should we respect the systems of rule that history has randomly bestowed on other nations? Why should we go to war, for example, out of respect for some Kuwaiti hereditary monarch’s right to use his kingdom as a personal bank account? Equally, why should we “stop” a war out of respect for some national socialist or clerical-fascist’s right to use his country as a personal fiefdom?" In other words, the "Bush-Cheney theory of zero national sovereignty" is correct. Why should we respect Gaddafi's right to rule "his" country?

I still haven't finished my post on that. In the meantime, read Flesh's excellent one. Like her, I am increasingly depressed at the situation in Israel, the right-wing drift among its politicians and among its defenders abroad, the continued hatred on both sides, the continued murderous violence from Islamic Jihad, the Netanyahu government's absolute lack of commitment to peace.

I notice George Orwell has been around my way again lately. Here he is, on the 3 March 1941:

Last night with G. [1] to see the shelter in the crypt under Greenwich church. The usual wooden and sacking bunks, dirty (no doubt also lousy when it gets warmer), ill-lighted and smelly, but not on this particular night very crowded. The crypt is simply a system of narrow passages running between vaults on which are the names of the families buried in them, the most recent being about 1800. . . . G. and the others insisted that I had not seen it at its worst, because on nights when it is crowded (about 250 people) the stench is said to be almost insupportable. I stuck to it, however, though none of the others would agree with me, that it is far worse for children to be playing among vaults full of corpses than that they should have to put up with a certain amount of living human smell.[1] Gwen O’Shaughnessy, Eileen’s sister-in-law. Peter Davison

Louis Proyect has two posts on the stupid pro-Gaddafi line of some of the "anti-imperialist" left. This one is on Diana Johnstone, and this one is on Jean Bricmont. I radically disagree with his support for Milosovic, but agree with most of his condemnations of Johnstone and Bricmont. We've encountered Johnstone before, as a genocide denialist (see Andrew Murphy here). Bricmont was co-author with Alan Sokal of the wonderful Fashionable Nonsense, but has since become more notorious for his own fashionable nonsense about, for example, the need for the de-Zionification of the American mind, often published by the "vile" CounterPunch.

Two more de facto defenders of Gaddafi are right-wing Cold Warriors turned darlings of the "anti-imperialist" left Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, given space at HuffPo to make their silly non-arguments about Iran and Libya and meddling. We've met the Leveretts before: see here, here and here.

Proyect's comrade Richard Estes (again not someone I endorse in general) also has two good posts on Chavez and the Arab revolution: 1, 2.

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

How I wish that this 'day' didn't have to exist; sadly it does and it needs to exist.

Women still earn in the regions of 17% less (full time work) and 36% (part time work) than their male counterparts for the same job descriptions. My union, Unison, regularly sends out reminders to get your pay level checked.

Looking at our televisions, women are depicted as superfluous and fickle. Like male characters, this might be alright for mutual comic or near true-to-life depiction purposes, but when it seeps into every pore, I get angry. Women are only good for dodging chocolate muffins in the street, getting confused over which damn yoghurt to eat, musing over pebble shaped air fresheners and also the most important job of all - holding "compare-your-shopping-receipts-parties" - I must do that next week!

I get angry at having to buffer my daughter at every turn: at the corner shop, supermarkets, petrol stations, newspaper stands - so-called Lads mags, Sunday Sport, pornography and fickle displays of women are everywhere. What are boys and girls supposed to make of this?

The first time my daughter exclaimed in a petrol station queue, she was 5 years old: "What are big jugs mummy?" The queue members looked at me as if I was some permissive lax parent. I found the courage to point out that it was the shop that was wrong and that my child and I should have a right to buy a pint of milk without having to have the producers of milk thrust in our faces. I now challenge and have managed to get numerous shops to consider their responsibilites and change to dust covers and appropriate displays.

Women's bodies are for consumption everyday and in every conceivable way. Increasingly, this is now becoming a problem for boys and men, but not anywhere near to the same extent. If we saw men depicted in the way women are in local shops etc., there would be uproar.

So, we have it: The Graphic Depiction of the lowest class of Whores, every day in every way. Think about what that means for a moment; it's truly horrible.

I am not so naive as to think that the porn industry or the depictions of women as fickle will disappear, but I do believe that each and everyone of us should consider our part in these depictions. Our daughters, our mothers, our girls, our women and increasingly boys - we should have their backs at every turn and demand a 'public' space in which we can all feel safe.

Friday, March 04, 2011

I’ve been too busy with my day job and the parallel threads on the Green Party here and here to do proper blogging this week, so here is my backlog of links, relatively un-digested.

Schadenfreude

I can't remember the last time I heard some UK news that gave me pleasure, so it was nice to wake up this morning to the news that the Lib Dems were pushed back to sixth place in the Barnsley by-election with 4% of the vote. I think the Lib Dems will be of interest only to historians after the next general election. Not so nice to see UKIP get over 12% of the vote and come second in a parliamentary election. Not so nice either to see the BNP outperform the Lib Dems and get 6% of the vote, although they have passed their high tide mark in Barnsley, with a 3% drop in their share.

Our absurd obsession with Israel

I very much enjoyed Nick Cohen’s article in the Observer on Sunday about the Middle Eastern revolts and what they reveal about the Western left. He makes (much more succinctly and lucidly than me) similar observations to ones I made here, including the noting of the contrast between Held and Halliday at LSE. I have started writing a post about the issue of the Israel obsession of the anti-anti-Zionist left.

Talking of our absurd obsession, any Channel 4 viewers have an opinion on The Promise they'd like to share? Apart from David Miller at Engage, everything I've read so far has been hysterical denunciation by kneejerk Israel defenders or anti-Zionists saying it was actually too pro-Zionist. The Hebron scenes rang true for me, but the Gaza scenes seemed totally preposterous, as did Len's presence at Deir Yassin.

Dallying with dictators

Jonathan Freedland has an excellent article on the West’s bipolar disorder when it comes to Arab tyrants. Inter alia, he mentions the appalling apologetics of the London School of Economics establishment, including Baron Anthony Giddens’ 2007 belief that Libya would become the Norway of the region without regime change (see also Andrew Coates) and Howard Davies’ bizarre equation between Gaddafi and George Soros. It turns out that Saif Gaddafi’s LSE PhD (lauded by Lord Desai and acknowledging David Held) is at least partly based on plagiarism. I think LSE founder Beatrice Webb, who whitewashed Stalin’s dictatorship, would be proud. [UPDATE: I wrote that last night and was glad to see hear this morning that Davies has resigned, my second schadenfreude moment. Also read Stephen Pollard on British universities and blood money. Update 2: Just read Jim's post on same topic, which links to more from Nick Cohen. See also Marko on why hostile democracies are better than friendly dictatorships.]

I very much enjoyed Sam Leith’s “You can’t force Britishness on everyone, Dave”, as channelled by Flesh is Grass, responding to Cameron replaying the death of multiculturalism. I also enjoyed James Bloodworth’s reporting on Cameron’s sometimes friends the Alinsky-ite Citizens UK.

Anti-fascism and the right to revolution

J Christian Adams in PJ Media has a powerful piece marking the anniversary of the executions of Sophie Scholl and the other White Rose resistors to Nazism. It is, in a sense, a conservative, Christian defence of militant anti-fascism and of revolution. More on this in a future post, hopefully.